Robert Francis Kennedy

Charlie Tasnadi/Associated Press

In his brief but extraordinary political career, the 42-year-old, Massachusetts-born Robert Francis Kennedy was Attorney General of the United States under two Presidents and Senator from New York. In those high offices he exerted an enormous influence on the nation's domestic and foreign affairs, first as the closest confidant of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and then, after Mr. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, as the immediate heir to his New Frontier policies.

Despite the deep grief he felt after his brother's assassination, Mr. Kennedy set out to replan his political life. He ran for the Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated his Republican opponent by 800,000 votes in a campaign that demonstrated the visceral appeal he had for voters.

Mr. Kennedy, who entered the 1968 presidential race only after the New Hampshire primary demonstrated voter frustration with the Vietnam war, won primaries in Indiana, Nebraska and California.

It was in the early morning hours after his California win that Mr. Kennedy was shot in a kitchen corridor outside the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where he had just made his victory speech. He died the next day, June 6, 1968.